L Neil Smith - [North American Confederacy 03]

by Their Majesties' Bucketeers (epub)

  “I had not anticipated . . . Very well, then: the first is that the bolt could not have been shot through the door without exploding there. Second, upon testing it, Mav found the springbow so deteriorated with age it could not have propelled the bolt through the door at all. Oh, and there was something about wood fragments within the powder cavity. I believe that’s the lot, isn’t it?”

  He gave the bolt a casual toss. “Except that there was also the problem with the alarm system, which went off after the springbow was apparently used to murder Srafen! Finally, I determined to my satisfaction that no one could have been in the adjacent room before or during the lecture. What does that suggest to you, dear paracauterist?”

  “That the murder couldn’t have happened in the manner we believed?”

  “Very good!” A gratified ripple spread through his fur. “I clung to this blasted theory of mine too long, yet it produced a general principle to the effect that, having eliminated everything clearly impossible, one must perforce examine the merely improbable. The culprit left the evidence behind after the murder was done.”

  “What?” This from half the people present, including myself.

  “A ruse to drag us off the evidential trail. However, it left a trail of its own, and that is what eventually solved this case. Wherever the location of the bomb, however it was ignited, it was afterward that the miscreant, taking advantage of the confusion, slipped around into the Weapons Hall, drove his pre-exploded bolt through the door, smashed the display case so we would think exactly what we did, and returned to the auditorium!”

  He cast an eye about the room. “You see, when I went to have some experimental bolts made, I found that others were having them fabricated, also. Close examination proved this to be of recent manufacture, artificially tarnished so as to appear ancient. Someone had blown it open, brought it to the Museum, and, at the crucial moment, drove it through the door, using a war hammer mounted on a nearby suit of armor. See the bright spots on the nether end? There are corresponding marks upon the hammer, as it happens. When I lifted the bow from its case, I observed something I did not think about until last night: large splinters of glass on top of the springbow, which could not have been there had the weapon been used! Thus the murderer never touched it (and did not realize its weakened condition) but simply smashed the case to mislead us, probably before he drove the arrow, permitting the alarms to cover up his noise.”

  Here Mav stood a moment breathing deeply, exhilarated. “All of this I had reasoned out at various times. I might as well confess, however, that until last night, I had not the faintest notion of who had done these things or how. In fact”—he now extracted a paper from his pocket—“I was prepared to ask Mymy to present my resignation to Tis, had actually begun to speak the words, when something struck me and I realized that I could solve the murder after all, by the precise means I had always believed applicable. Thus I departed in some haste, looked into a number of details, and now I know!”

  “Who was it?” Tis demanded, simultaneously with several others, including one Bucketeer who had gotten caught up in the spirit of things.

  Mav pointed a finger. “It was you, Niitood, who killed Professor Srafen!”

  The reporter leaped to his hands. “Impossible, old sandshrimp! You yourself cleared mel I had no reason, nor the means. My only crime was being there!”

  “Nonetheless, old sandshrimp, I will prove it before we leave this room. There is one small complication: you didn’t know what it was you were doing, and, on that account, are completely innocent.”

  The reporter sagged back to his seat. “Whew, glad to hear it—you almost had me convinced!”

  Mav rippled. “Sorry, Niitood, the story you’ll take away will assuage you. Srafen was indeed carrying a bomb, although rhe didn’t know it, a complex device with whitepowder and various other parts that rendered it most sensitive to the electromagnetic influences of your flash attachment. I have learned that an electrical arc generates a correlative ethereal vibration, which may be employed for numerous purposes—even as the trigger for a bomb.” Once again he pointed his finger. “Isn’t that correct, Law?”

  Srafen’s husband blinked surprise. “I suppose you’re right, Inquirer. I never believed that you, a mere inventor of raincoats, could figure out such a thing. My congratulations, and I hope you’ll carry on for both of us, inventing, while I am in gaol.”

  “Or between the Blocks!” cried a sanguine Tis.

  “They don’t send someone to the Blocks for embezzlement,” Mav said mildly, “which is all that Law is guilty of. Dear fellow, I believe that you’ll be out quite soon enough. Your inventor’s expertise has confirmed my theories, and for that it will appear upon your record that you assisted justice.”

  Mav turned now and raised the finger of guilt once more. Niitood rose as well, for this was the very moment we had come to witness. “The actual criminal is—”

  Hedgyt leaped up, holding his clock before him. Before anyone could act, he was behind Tis. “Stand where you arel This is a bomb, and I shall— NO!" Niitood advanced upon him, readying his camera. The surgeon retreated to the window in horror. Tis slid in a faint to the floor before his cushion.

  “NO!” Mav shouted, and I, too, realized what was about to happen.

  BRROOOMU As the picture flashed, the object in the doctor’s hands exploded, dashing him through the window, filling the room with smoke. Tis’s cushion back burst into flames. There passed a long time before the Bucketeers brought sand to put it out. I swear that every building in this city is safe from conflagration except our Precinct station.

  All adroop, Niitood looked down at the fragments of his camera on the floor.

  Mav went to the shattered window. A shudder running through his pelt told me what it was he saw below. There would be nothing I or a dozen of the finest physicians in Mathas could do for our old colleague.

  A crowd began to gather; Bucketeers came from the station doors to hold them back.

  At last Hedgyt and Srafen were united. In death.

  XVII: A Science of Intuition

  “Another round, good Tamet!” Mav exclaimed as Niitood slid quietly to the floor of the Hose & Springbow. The victorious detective was determined that we all should join the journalist before this afternoon was done.

  “A moment, Mav, before your sensibilities have vanished altogether?” I was becoming equally adamant concerning certain answers Hedgyt’s precipitate demise had denied me. “Kindly stay your hand, innkeeper, for first there’s a reckoning due that has little connexion with gold or silver.”

  The retired Bucketeer and landlord looked from Mav to me in some confusion, made up his mind, and wound the juicing box, then stepped away, narrowly avoiding tripping over Niitood. There is a saying to the effect that Pah looks after children and inebriates; besides, Niitood had no new camera. Mav reached toward the box, hesitated, then pushed the infernal contraption across the table at me.

  “Mymy, will you kindly take a jolt and calm yourself? Tis was satisfied that we found our culprit this morning, as was the Lord Ennramo—and thus certain August Personages better left unmentioned. Myssmo asked no questions, nor did Fatpa, Leds, nor, most especially, Law and Ensdal And look at Niitood here—”

  “That’s easily explained,” said I. “He is a journalist and makes up all his own answers as he goes along!”

  Vyssu charged her long inhaling tube from Mav’s flask. “Well, I, too, have questions, dear, and I’ll be put off no longer. Mymy, we shall keep the scoundrel here until he confesses—how it was he actually solved the murder.” “Indeed,” I agreed, “it seems to me that progress requires communication among those who create it. That would be scientifical, would it not?”

  “Oh, bother the both of you!” snapped the detective, a sour look in his pelt. “In any event, there was very little ‘scientifical’ about it, as least in conscious application, which is why I am reluctant to discuss it. Oh, very well, then, I’ll supply your moldering answers
. Much good they may do you!” He took the little flask from Vyssu’s fingers. “When Hedgyt, whom I’d grown to have some feeling for, offered me inhaling fluid on the very day I’d deliberately made myself a target for a murderer, I found myself looking for an excuse to refuse politely. Why? I hadn’t the foggiest notion at the time! How do you like that for scientifical reasoning, Mymy?”

  Vyssu chuckled. “So there is a male intuition, after all. I’ve often suspected as much.”

  I added, “Perhaps you have an instinct for detectiving, Mav, or at least for discovering the guilty.”

  “ ‘Intuition’! ‘Instinct’! As Tis would have it, ‘Balderdash and damprot!’ These expressions would imply that we are bom with knowledge in our minds, when, to the contrary, my dears, we come into the world completely ignorant— which is our blessing, Srafen often said, because it means that, unlike animals fixed to predetermined patterns, we can learn and change whatever is around us in a manner unanticipated by nature.”

  I looked at Vyssu; she looked at me; we both shrugged. “Yet, for no good reason, I suddenly mistrusted Hedgyt. The alienists are right about one thing: the lamviin mind is of two parts: the conscious, shrewd and dirigible; and the unconscious, naive, but very quick. And, as thoughts are to the conscious mind, so are feelings to the unconscious.” “Are you saying,” I asked, “that we should be guided by our feelings as much as by our thoughts? Scarcely a philosophy for—”

  “No, lamviin are a thinking race, and we should be guided by our thoughts, and by our thoughts about our feelings. Buried more or less deeply within me, I knew, were perfectly good reasons why I shouldn’t complacently be enjoying Hedgyt’s spirits. It took me but a moment to discover at least one; can either of you guess what it was?” Silence from the pair of us initially, then Vyssu spoke: “He was a physician and such a professional might think of poison as a likely weapon—and have access to it.”

  “An inventor also,” countered Mav, “and that is what betrayed him. Unbeknownst to me, I had unconsciously observed and associated his model-maker’s worklamship with that of the springbow bolts I’d had made up, and the mention, at the craftslam’s shop, that others were requiring springbow bolts, as well. We both thought it a new popular fancy.

  “The tarnish on the arrow I connected to that corrosion one often encounters at dockside—which is very likely how Hedgyt artificially aged the projectile. All of this I rediscovered in the moment I hesitated to accept his fluid Later, I remembered Hedgyt mentioning that he had seen to Srafen’s medical needs whenever he was in port, and—” “Stay a moment, Mav!” I cried. “What has that to do with—”

  “Do you not yet see, my dear paracauterist? Where might a bomb be placed without the wearer’s knowledge? Why, within the carapace itself, by a highly skilled and inventive surgeon! I recalled Srafen mentioning that rhe had undergone an operation, and later when rhe complained of suddenly gaining weight, although I never connected either of the statements with Hedgyt until last evening.”

  I blinked. No wonder I had never thought of this; it was as alien to me as any harm done to a patient could be. “That would explain the physical evidence, right enough. Tell me, how did Hedgyt know to appear at the Museum— wouldn’t any camera have set off Srafen’s bomb?”

  “Only those designed by and made for Niitood. You see, they all knew one another, Hedgyt, Niitood, and Srafen’s husband, Law. They all belonged to the same inventors’ club, which each of them invited me to join; I would surmise it was from Niitood or some friend that our murderer learned of my involvement in the case, there upon sending his anonymous messages to me and to your parents, Mymy. Thus Hedgyt, who was experimenting with wireless telegraphy, knew of Niitood’s flash camera and of Law’s tinkering with whitepowder. Perhaps he hoped that one of them might take the blame, perhaps he merely thought to confuse us utterly—which he very nearly did.”

  Vyssu crinkled her fur in thought. “Why did he bring the bomb to my house, then?”

  Mav said, “We’ll never know. I believe he meant to make a gift of it to me, in hopes it would destroy me at some time when he was safely absent. It could be that he planned on triggering it himself, perhaps through a window.”

  “I see,” I ventured, “and when he came and saw the riot, he became confused and decided not to give you the clock, but held on to it jealousy through the entire evening so that it wouldn’t be examined.”

  Mav rippled. “I believe that you are right, my dear. It must have been a shock to see Niitood there this morning. Hedgyt knew, before the end, that he had fashioned his own destruction.”

  “But why on Sodde Lydfe did he do it at all?” I persisted. “Surely, after all those nonades, he couldn’t have harbored a resentment because Srafen had rejected him for marriage? They were friends.”

  Vyssu drew upon her tube. “I believe that I can answer that one, Mav. It wasn’t that rejection, Mymy. It was that Srafen had remarried recently, and to as disgusting a pair as were possible to imagine.”

  “Don’t be too harsh on Law, my dear,” said Mav, “for he is a good inventor and will likely prove of use to society someday, despite himself. The peculiarly humorous thing is that despite rher apparently irrational fascination with them (an affliction the likes of which none of us are entirely immune to), Srafen knew quite clearly what rher mates were. When we arrived rher solicitor, we discovered Srafen’s will—in which rhe states that rhe married the pair in part to preclude their fastening themselves upon some unfortunate who didn’t understand them!”

  “So I suppose that Srafen had the last laugh, after all,” said I.

  “Indeed,” my friend replied, “and rhe would have liked it that way.”

  I understand old Leds passed away a few weeks ago. I cannot bring myself to be too sad, for he lived a very long and adventurous life. It has reminded me, however, that, in preparing this memoir for the records of the interstellar vessel Tom Paine Maru, I have been asked by EdWina Ol-son-Bear to relate what has become of each of us in the twenty-nine Sodde Lydfan years since we lived through these events.

  Tamet, the innkeeper, has acquired a chain of public houses, which he has recently converted into places that serve bad food very quickly to people parked outside in watuless carriages of the sort Law was working on, which I had hoped would not prove popular. Thus individuals may poison themselves and one another at the same time, in

  which, I suppose, there is a sort of admirable efficiency.

  Speaking of pollution, Myssmo eventually became a celebrity of sorts, appearing in moving pictures (which were being experimented with during the time of the Srafen investigation). I understand that she is very rich and that her house reeks every moment of sand setting-resin.

  Law went on to invent a good many things, as Mav predicted, yet I fear that his brief association with Hedgyt did us all more harm than good, for he is the creator of the very bomb that figured so highly in the recent war with Pod-fet—the one that can destroy a city and leaves a cloud behind shaped like a peresk tree.

  I don’t believe that this is what Mav means when he speaks of progress.

  Doctor Ensda never was convicted of embezzlement, having this time found a solicitor nearly as clever as himself. Nor did he give up on fortunetelling, but simply moved on to another area of specialization. The last I heard, he was an economic adviser to Their Majesties’ government.

  Fatpa, too, has got a civil service position, and one not too unlike the one that he enjoyed during his younger days upon the continent as a highwaylam. He now heads Inland Revenue, collecting taxes.

  Sathe? Well, I saw her yesterevening, and every year she grows in dignity and gentle influence. She has it in her to undo the damage wrought by a hundred Ensdas, and her parties, at which many powerful individuals may be seen, are gradually diverting our civilization into a saner, healther direction. I hope she lives to see her son’s philosophical garden bear fruit.

  Niitood is often one of those whom Sathe has invited, though he is more cynical
and nihilistic than ever. Neither she nor Mav will give up hope of his rehabilitation, however, and only partially because he is Editor-in-Chief of the Mathas Imperial Intelligencer. He is also an old friend.

  Vyssu, of course, retired from her dubious profession shortly after the solution to the Srafen murder and married Mav. They have three lovely children, one who may become Great Foddu’s second private consulting detective, one who threatens to follow in his mother’s handsteps by becoming a politician, and one who, I am pleased to say, plans on studying medicine under the tutelage of his sur-father, Mymysiir Offe Mav (nee Woorn), which I suppose gives away the ending of my personal story and that of Mav. I indeed finished studying, dividing my time between the Bucketeers and my surfather’s practice, which I eventually inherited—not in the usual tragic maimer, but because dear Sasa desired to retire and travel with my other parents.

  Mav, on another hand, resigned from the Bucketeers shortly after our adventure with the murderous Navy surgeon and became, as I have said, a private practitioner in his own right. This career he has pursued until this very day, except that he participates, as well, in politics, taking up an end of Srafen’s work, which rhe might not have expected. Mav opposed the war with Podfet and has been highly instrumental in making something of the peace. It is his view that politics, like life itself, has three major aspects: there are those to whom tradition and paternal figures are central, who speak of law and order and focus their attention on the Upper House and Triarchy; there are those who somehow concern themselves with people in aggregate, with suffering, and with making others suffer for the sake of those who were suffering in the first place, theirs is the Middle House and a false equality among lamn their fetish; finally, there are those (of whom my husband is one and I another) to whom there are no aggregates, but only individuals, who may be liked or disliked, but only on the basis of what they are or do as individuals. To us, liberty is the central issue, and, although we tend to see the Lower House as useful in obtaining that end, we place little faith in any political process and more upon the people whom we know and trade with, love and live with.